Maybe everyone forgets that we sit over tectonic plates that also cause earthquakes when they shift. I for one an very proud to work in the oil field. Natural resources are important to our country and will keep our nation alive. Yes, there are a few companies in the industry with bad practices, but the coal mines have the same issues- some just don't care about the environment. A few bad apples have left a left a sour taste in everyone's mouth, that's no reason to slander all oil field practices.

They don't in global warming either!Everyone knows that horizontal drilling and liquefying the Earth creates pathways for releasing accumulated geological stress.In fact,fracking aggregrates differently strained regions into one.And then the liberated hydrocarbon goes up everywhere, not just the drilled hole, and ends up in water wells and other acquifers giving them the sulfur smell!But the damn conservatives and Republicans DON'T WANT TO LEAVE ANY HYDROCARBONS TO ANY FUTURE GENERATION SO THAT THEY CAN HAVE $2 GASOLINE NOW AND SCREW THE FUTURE!

It is scary how brainwashed these people are. They are the house slaves. They don't want anybody questioning what their master does or for what they may be responsible. Because the master takes care of them. What about the rest of us? The ones that are being subjected to legitimately dangerous chemicals and the "fraccidents" that happen far too often. Our economy relies heavily on the oil, gas, and coal industries. That is an undisputed fact. The people working for the industry are not the problem. The problem is that we are allowing people that have no concern for us to cause a fight among us. REPUBLICANS, take the time to look at the actual research. Start thinking pragmatically about the actual repercussions of fracking. Is your paycheck worth the lives of the West Virginian people?

<quoted text>"A number of coincidental circumstances appear to make a compelling argument for the recent Youngstown-area seismic events to have been induced"Of course the left-wing eco weenies aren't able to grasp "appear".

LOL you don't grasp reality. You just pick and choose your facts. You have none. You make things up just like every other republican. Just like you republicans aren't running against the actual President Obama. You are running against the Kenyan socialist Muslim fake Obama. But I must say you are a true republican because you honed right in on one word and made a completely illogical argument. The first line of the article says "The Ohio DNR confirmed that a series of earthquakes in the state were caused by injecting leftover fracking fluids". Suck it you right wing freaks!

<quoted text>LOL you don't grasp reality. You just pick and choose your facts. You have none. You make things up just like every other republican. Just like you republicans aren't running against the actual President Obama. You are running against the Kenyan socialist Muslim fake Obama. But I must say you are a true republican because you honed right in on one word and made a completely illogical argument. The first line of the article says "The Ohio DNR confirmed that a series of earthquakes in the state were caused by injecting leftover fracking fluids". Suck it you right wing freaks!

you just have to wonder if sucking hundreds of billions of barrels of OIL ,LEAVES A BIG VOID, and as in an auto where it lubes and moderates the heating..WHAT IF ANY THING DOES IT DO TO THE EARTH ,ALSO..

Seeing as how they spend money in our towns, pay for road bonds that help repair roads they traverse with their equipment, and live next door as our friends and neighbors - Hell yeah I support frac! There are so many businesses and job openings in the oil field from frac hand, mechanic, office admin, all the way up the chain to management and engineer. Yes, we help pay for our engineers to attend the college of their choice as long as they give us time in the summers to give them hands on knowledge of what happens during a 'frac'. FYI, there are other consultants and company personnel that oversee radiation monitors to make sure everything is legit. We aren't dumping thousands of chemicals in the ground and contaminating that water we also drink. But it's okay, continue to think that we in the oil field are all evil scum bags. I'll continue working in the oil field because it has helped me pay off a car, house, and start a college savings for my baby. Yeah, I'm that evil.

Geothermal energy - Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), a new type of geothermal power technologies that do not require natural convective hydrothermal resources, are known to be associated with induced seismicity. EGS involves pumping fluids at pressure to enhance or create permeability through the use of hydraulic fracturing techniques. Induced seismicity in Basel led to suspension of its HDR project. A seismic hazard evaluation was then conducted, which resulted in the total cancellation of the project in December 2009.

Hydraulic Fracturing - This is particularly pertinent at the current time with the non-debate (scientifically at least) over fracking technologies in the United States (no it’s not a swearword from Battlestar Galactica).

Hydraulic fracturing, to give fracking its correct term, is a technology used to induce or propagate fractures in rocks by injecting pressurised fluids into those fractures and thereby releasing held oil or gas allowing those fossil fuels to migrate either to existing reservoirs or to come directly to the surface. For simplicity, using fracking technologies, we are rapidly increasing and decreasing the pressure on natural faults within the earth’s crust to release hydrocarbons and actually lubricating and extending these natural fracture zones.

If you listened to opinion and editorial nonsense from the media you would assume that fracking is a safe, wholesome technology that is helping America become less dependent on foreign oil so three cheers for the good ol’ US of A. Unfortunately this is not the case and factual studies have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that these fracking technologies can and have produced substantial earthquakes and increase seismicity wherever the technology is used.

As a more pertinent warning; there are many fracking techniques currently being undertaken close by or actually on the New Madrid Rift faulting system and, due to not understanding how that fault zone may be activated, we could conceivably activate and therefore induce a magnitude 8 earthquake in the region.

That is why it is vitally important that any person understands that opinion is not fact. To cut to the chase any media source that promotes fracking as a safe technology are lying to the general public and are part of the scams and frauds perpetrated by business interests that could and will likely lead to an extreme event in more seismically active areas of the continental US.

Fracking causes seismic activity as the pressures are released, this is a fact backed up by years of research and evidential support. Fracking also causes many other potential environmental impacts including; contamination of ground water, risks to air quality, the migration of gases and hydraulic fracturing chemicals to the surface, surface contamination from spills and flowback and the various health effects of these. For these reasons hydraulic fracturing has come under scrutiny internationally, with some countries suspending or even outright banning its use.

That is not the case in the United States and for exactly the same reasons that there is a non-debate on human induced climate change. Namely this is because corporate America (and all large global producers affecting the environment) have far more money to spend on disinformation campaigns than scientists have on promoting their real and proven, and therefore, factual research.

Geothermal energy - Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), a new type of geothermal power technologies that do not require natural convective hydrothermal resources, are known to be associated with induced seismicity. EGS involves pumping fluids at pressure to enhance or create permeability through the use of hydraulic fracturing techniques. Induced seismicity in Basel led to suspension of its HDR project. A seismic hazard evaluation was then conducted, which resulted in the total cancellation of the project in December 2009.

Hydraulic Fracturing - This is particularly pertinent at the current time with the non-debate (scientifically at least) over fracking technologies in the United States (no it’s not a swearword from Battlestar Galactica).

Hydraulic fracturing, to give fracking its correct term, is a technology used to induce or propagate fractures in rocks by injecting pressurised fluids into those fractures and thereby releasing held oil or gas allowing those fossil fuels to migrate either to existing reservoirs or to come directly to the surface. For simplicity, using fracking technologies, we are rapidly increasing and decreasing the pressure on natural faults within the earth’s crust to release hydrocarbons and actually lubricating and extending these natural fracture zones.

If you listened to opinion and editorial nonsense from the media you would assume that fracking is a safe, wholesome technology that is helping America become less dependent on foreign oil so three cheers for the good ol’ US of A. Unfortunately this is not the case and factual studies have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that these fracking technologies can and have produced substantial earthquakes and increase seismicity wherever the technology is used.

As a more pertinent warning; there are many fracking techniques currently being undertaken close by or actually on the New Madrid Rift faulting system and, due to not understanding how that fault zone may be activated, we could conceivably activate and therefore induce a magnitude 8 earthquake in the region.

That is why it is vitally important that any person understands that opinion is not fact. To cut to the chase any media source that promotes fracking as a safe technology are lying to the general public and are part of the scams and frauds perpetrated by business interests that could and will likely lead to an extreme event in more seismically active areas of the continental US.

Fracking causes seismic activity as the pressures are released, this is a fact backed up by years of research and evidential support. Fracking also causes many other potential environmental impacts including; contamination of ground water, risks to air quality, the migration of gases and hydraulic fracturing chemicals to the surface, surface contamination from spills and flowback and the various health effects of these. For these reasons hydraulic fracturing has come under scrutiny internationally, with some countries suspending or even outright banning its use.

That is not the case in the United States and for exactly the same reasons that there is a non-debate on human induced climate change. Namely this is because corporate America (and all large global producers affecting the environment) have far more money to spend on disinformation campaigns than scientists have on promoting their real and proven, and therefore, factual research.

Thus these corporates spend huge amounts of cash seeding junk science, disinformation campaigns, pressure groups and opinion to the mass media and this directly affects the vast majority of people’s views and opinions who believe that scientists are debating whether Human Induced Climate Change or Human Induced Seismicity is actually a real thing. The reality is far different.

To put it bluntly 97% of scientists agree that the earth has been heating up over the last 300 years due to the proliferation of carbon we humans have been putting in to our atmosphere with a particularly strong spike in the last 50 years or so. The other 3% of scientists, who are either on the fence or against these theories, are likely to be either financially supported by big business or are dependent on them in some way for funding (it pains me to say that most dissenters are geologists who rely on the energy companies for work).

This is the same for Human Induced Seismicity, seismographs are impossible to fake so any earthquakes that are in the vicinity of these various fracking technologies a link can be made using evidence support systems which is why there is no debate in the scientific community about fracking causing earthquakes, the science is proven and the earthquakes caused cannot be faked, especially in areas with little to no known previous seismic activity.

My advice is to not listen to opinion but to seek out the actual scientific studies for yourselves, if you don't understand them listen to someone that does like a scientist and not a journalist, politician, religious leader or someone else in the pay of big business or who has something to gain by being a denier.

Remember opinions are not facts.‘Nullius in Verba'(“Take nobody's word for it”) the motto of the Royal Society. Look at the actual science and not the idiotic opinion of groups who promote nonsense to the public for economic advantage.

This is a very interesting article by a preeminent geophysicist, Julian Bulman, and it explains several aspects of the climate change non-debate.

It is reproduced with his permission. I guess I will have to split it in to three posts:

Human ingenuity and technological advances have given us the ability to interact with our environment as no other animal or plant has been able to do through the whole of our planets 4.54 billion year evolution in such a small and inconsequential geological timescale. This includes the ability to produce significant earthquakes and other seismic activities using these technological advancements.

As we have developed our technical abilities we have also inadvertently caused earthquakes and other seismic events. The simplest example of this is our conventional and nuclear weapons capability where various conventional explosions and nuclear tests have registered on the ML scale (Richter Scale). Going so far as to produce upwards of magnitude 5 quakes for some underground nuclear tests in the late 1950’s and also possibly leading to further quakes in otherwise quiet seismic areas.

However weapons are not the only way humans have induced earthquakes and other seismic events. These other inducements include fluid injection into the earth technologies, large earthworks and dam projects, mining and geothermal technologies. Here are several examples of how these technologies interact with seismicity:

Reservoirs - The mass of water in a reservoir alters the pressure in the rock below and through fissures in the rocks, lubricates the faults on which they may sit, which can trigger earthquakes (possibly extremely large magnitude quakes). Reservoir-induced seismic events can be relatively large compared to other forms of induced seismicity.

The first case of reservoir induced seismicity occurred in 1932 in Algeria’s Oued Fodda Dam. There have been similar incidents including the 6.3 magnitude 1967 Koynanagar Earthquake attributed to the Koyna Dam reservoir. During early construction of the Vajont Dam in Italy, there were seismic shocks recorded during its initial fill. After a landslide almost certainly triggered by this increased seismicity filled the reservoir in 1963, the local tsunami in the lake behind the dam caused by the landslide overtopped the dam causing massive a 250m high megatsunami and subsequent flooding with around 2,000 deaths, it was drained and consequently seismic activity has become almost completely non-existent. On August 1, 1975, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake at Oroville, California, was attributed to seismicity from a massive earth-fill dam and reservoir recently constructed and filled there. In Zambia, Kariba Lake may have provoked similar effects.

More recently, the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which caused approximately 68,000 deaths, is another possible example of a large dam project inducing seismicity. An article in Science suggested that the construction and filling of the Zipingpu Dam may have triggered the earthquake. However, researchers have been denied access to seismological and geological data to examine the cause of the quake further. Some experts worry that because of this apparent link with the 2008 Sichuan event the Three Gorges Dam in China may cause an increase in the frequency and intensity of earthquakes.

Mining - Mining leaves voids that generally alter the balance of forces in the rock. These voids may collapse producing seismic waves and in some cases reactivate existing faults causing minor or even large earthquakes. Natural cavern collapses that form sinkholes would produce an essentially identical local seismic event. We have also been responsible for several volcanic inducements by drilling into seismically active areas such as the Sidoarjo mud flow in Porong, Sidoarjo in East Java, Indonesia, which was caused by the company PT Lapindo Brantas sinking a natural gas well and then over pressurising the system by fracking (see below).

Wow I really love ur post silica ..I have felt strongly against fracking since early 2008. I am amazed how wonderfully u explained the process. Thank you!! Sometimes people need to realize u have to think for yourself ...ur gut should tell u its not safe!!

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